Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Your Online Privacy Is Now In Jeopardy

A big court defeat for the FTC this week is putting the agency's power
to protect your online privacy in jeopardy, analysts say. The ruling
could wind up giving Google and Facebook, not to mention other companies
in the internet ecosystem, the ability to escape all privacy oversight
from the FTC, and possibly from the rest of government, too, critics
claim, unless Congress intervenes.

Unless regulators can persuade the courts to overturn Monday's decision,
the result will be "a fatal blow" to consumer protection, said Jeffrey
Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

"The decision will enable a company like Google … to engage in unfair
marketing and data-gathering practices without having to worry about
possible FTC consequences," he said.